By the diversions and the
appropriation of the urban environment, extreme sports have been introduced into
our society. If they have triggered new artistic cultural and clothing
practices, they have also led to problems of cohabitation with those who do not
practise and a questioning about the legitimacy of these practices. Among
them, BMX is often barely known and little understood; it is therefore
increasingly threatened, not to say forbidden. To change mentalities, BMX has
to become a culture proposing its own codes and values, by creating an identity
of its own. How can a designer contribute to it ?
For
Arnaud Mauler, this identity will manage to assert itself thanks to
« street wear ». This identity is deeply rooted in the practice of
BMX, for which the accessories, the clothes and even the body eventually bear
the marks. Arnaud has therefore decided to develop this idea of
stigmatization under the label Xpan: shoes, trousers and a jacket,
to bear the values of the BMXer community, which have been only and
paradoxically stigmatized so far. These three objects have been designed to
progressively reveal a second skin, not to say a second nature, hidden under a
first cover. This sport, which toughens and reveals, thus expresses its
specificity and its symbolic revelation, beyond appearances and
prejudice.
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